Hi everyone
Both Shally and I had an incredibly busy semester break, which seemed busier than our regular teaching days. Regardless, we’re all set for another busy semester with the BEA kids.
CamTESOL 2012:
For the first time, both Shally and I presented at CamTESOL together in the research stream. In the past, we presented our own workshops, so it was exciting to present the outline for one of BEA’s first publications. Our presentation is actually the foundation for several publications, but I’m hoping to have our first one published in one of the journals focusing on English language education in Asia.
About half way through our presentation, the power went out. I anticipated that this might happened since this has happened to other presenters in the past. Before we left for Phnom Penh, we made about 70 copies of our slide presentation for just a situation. Once we handed out the copies of our slides, we were able to finish up the rest of our presentation without any trouble.
I was quite shocked at the number of people who attended our session. I had expected about 50-60 attendees, but there must’ve been at least 120 people with some even standing in the hall listening in through the open windows. We even missed most of the closing ceremonies because there was a huge line-up of people wanting to talk with both Shally and I about BEA and its programs. Overall, it was a fantastic conference and we got to meet so many great people! All of our conference materials have been uploaded to the website, and can been found in the Conferences section.
School Purchases:
Last week, Shally and I spent Friday morning driving around the Psar Leur market area looking for an office table and a cabinet. As usual, we had to visit a few place before we found something that we liked. We were able to add to our office furniture because a donation from one of Shally’s friends from England, Christine White. Once again, thanks so much Christine. Rather than keeping all of our school supplies on the floor, we now have a lovely cabinet to keep everything organized and free from dust!
Shally also found five cement benches to put outside and in our kitchen area. We noticed that some of the BEA kids were a bit too noisy in the library, which disturbed the students who wanted to read or study. We needed a few places for those who wanted to chat before class, so now they can sit outside or in the kitchen and chat as much as they want with other students.
Semester 2 Curriculum & Teaching Schedule:
I spent most of last week and all of this weekend finished up our curriculum for semester 2 and organizing the daily teaching schedule for all of our courses. This scheduling was particularly difficult this semester because I had to work around so many national and religious holidays in April and May. I wasn’t able to add as many supplementary review lessons as I wanted to because we have fewer teaching days this semester, but I was fortunately able to streamline all the task-based projects and test weeks for all our courses to fall on the same week. Similar to last semester, Shally will be responsible for planning the basic and pre-intermediate lessons while I’ll be planning the lessons for the intermediate course, which is part of BEA’s on-site and online teacher training program. If you're interested in what exactly we'll be doing this semester, you can take a look at our Pre-Intermediate Teaching Schedule at the end of this blog posting.
Anyways, the break was busy as anticipated, but we’re all set to start another exciting semester with the BEA kids!
Onwards to another roller-coaster semester…
Both Shally and I had an incredibly busy semester break, which seemed busier than our regular teaching days. Regardless, we’re all set for another busy semester with the BEA kids.
CamTESOL 2012:
For the first time, both Shally and I presented at CamTESOL together in the research stream. In the past, we presented our own workshops, so it was exciting to present the outline for one of BEA’s first publications. Our presentation is actually the foundation for several publications, but I’m hoping to have our first one published in one of the journals focusing on English language education in Asia.
About half way through our presentation, the power went out. I anticipated that this might happened since this has happened to other presenters in the past. Before we left for Phnom Penh, we made about 70 copies of our slide presentation for just a situation. Once we handed out the copies of our slides, we were able to finish up the rest of our presentation without any trouble.
I was quite shocked at the number of people who attended our session. I had expected about 50-60 attendees, but there must’ve been at least 120 people with some even standing in the hall listening in through the open windows. We even missed most of the closing ceremonies because there was a huge line-up of people wanting to talk with both Shally and I about BEA and its programs. Overall, it was a fantastic conference and we got to meet so many great people! All of our conference materials have been uploaded to the website, and can been found in the Conferences section.
School Purchases:
Last week, Shally and I spent Friday morning driving around the Psar Leur market area looking for an office table and a cabinet. As usual, we had to visit a few place before we found something that we liked. We were able to add to our office furniture because a donation from one of Shally’s friends from England, Christine White. Once again, thanks so much Christine. Rather than keeping all of our school supplies on the floor, we now have a lovely cabinet to keep everything organized and free from dust!
Shally also found five cement benches to put outside and in our kitchen area. We noticed that some of the BEA kids were a bit too noisy in the library, which disturbed the students who wanted to read or study. We needed a few places for those who wanted to chat before class, so now they can sit outside or in the kitchen and chat as much as they want with other students.
Semester 2 Curriculum & Teaching Schedule:
I spent most of last week and all of this weekend finished up our curriculum for semester 2 and organizing the daily teaching schedule for all of our courses. This scheduling was particularly difficult this semester because I had to work around so many national and religious holidays in April and May. I wasn’t able to add as many supplementary review lessons as I wanted to because we have fewer teaching days this semester, but I was fortunately able to streamline all the task-based projects and test weeks for all our courses to fall on the same week. Similar to last semester, Shally will be responsible for planning the basic and pre-intermediate lessons while I’ll be planning the lessons for the intermediate course, which is part of BEA’s on-site and online teacher training program. If you're interested in what exactly we'll be doing this semester, you can take a look at our Pre-Intermediate Teaching Schedule at the end of this blog posting.
Anyways, the break was busy as anticipated, but we’re all set to start another exciting semester with the BEA kids!
Onwards to another roller-coaster semester…
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